by Portia Moore
I let out a deep sigh, feeling my eyes tear up. “Chris, he said he caught you in our house. How many times did it happen in our house?” My tone is incredibly weak from the burning in my throat.
He looks at me sorrowfully and with pity. I don’t want his pity. I want his answers.
“Gwen, is this important?” he pleads.
“Don’t you dare ask me what’s important or not!” I yell.
“Twice, only twice. The time Chris caught us and one other time. It wasn’t actual sex the first time,” he says painfully, and I cringe not wanting to know what he’s talking about.
I hear the frustration in his voice, and I resent him for it. Tears that I can’t control are coming, and I want to get up and run. He doesn’t deserve to see them, but I have to finish this.
“Why her, Will? Of all people, why a girl who grew up with our son, his best friend, a teenage girl?”
He covers his face in his hands. “I don’t know, Gwen. It just happened.”
I feel my face harden.
“And I don’t mean to make it sound trivial or simple, but I don’t know! It was just a terrible situation that I regret every day. I regretted it while it happened,” he says and huffs.
“Not enough to stop it! If Chris hadn’t caught you, would you have stopped?” I yell.
“Yes, I would have. I loved you. I know it was wrong. I just . . . I was weak. I was stupid. She made me feel alive. I felt dead! I don’t know why. I can’t explain, but she did,” he says frantically.
I’m sobbing now, and it looks as though my wails cut though him.
“I’m so incredibly, unbelievably sorry,” he says, tears pouring from his eyes.
“You didn’t love her. At all,” I say, looking into his eyes.
He squints at me. “No, it was never love. Not how I felt for you, how I feel for you.”
“You cared about her at least!” I say in disbelief. I can’t believe the man I loved, whom I’m still undeniably in love with, would do this to me and to a young girl without caring about her at all.
He looks at his hands. “Yes, I did care about her.”
I’d thought hearing that would make me feel better, but it makes me feel worse. “How could you pretend that it didn’t happen? After she moved back here, how did you both just act like what you did never happened?”
He grips his hands. “That night Chris found us, it was a wake-up call. I realized that what I had been searching for, I’d always had, and I was on the cusp of losing it all. My son, my wife.” He sobs, and I close my eyes. “I knew at that moment that I was a fucking idiot! That I had to be crazy to do anything as foolish as I had. That I wouldn’t make it without you and Chris. Without you, there was no point in living.” He sounds so genuine it makes me sick.
“You had to sleep without our son’s eighteen-year-old best friend to figure that out?” I ask in disbelief, and his face falls. I can’t hear anymore. “Now you have another reason to exist—your love child. You don’t need me anymore, Will.” I stand from the table.
“Gwen, please!” He rushes over to me and pulls me close.
I push him away.
“This was eight years ago. I made a mistake, please,” he cries, holding me. His whole body shakes as he cries, and I begin to cry too—a hard, ugly cry. “Please forgive me. I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t leave me. Hate me, hit me, treat me like shit, but please don’t leave me. Give me a chance to make things right. I’ll do counseling. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He looks up at me, his chin resting on my stomach.
“I don’t know if I can,” I tell him, hatred and love crashing against each other inside me when I stare into his sea-blue eyes.
“Try, please,” he says, his grip loosening on my waist.
I slowly step away from him. “Have you seen your daughter yet?”
He glances at me guiltily. “I went there to confront Lisa about telling Chris. I saw her briefly. I don’t know if I’m in a good state to be anyone’s father right now.” He holds his head.
I sigh. “Well, you should get there. You’re a couple of years behind already, I think.” With all the strength in me, I walk out the door.
“LOLLI!” WILLA RUNS up the steps and squeezes the golden retriever sitting on my aunt Dani’s porch. “I missed you so much!”
William’s sudden appearance sent me into one of my patterns from so long ago. It used to be a lot easier to run away from my problems. Now it’s like no matter where I run, I have to carry them with me.
“Willa bear,” my aunt Dani says, stepping out on her porch, her brown hair peeking out from under her scarf. She’s so much thinner than she was just a few weeks ago, and I do my absolute best not to give away how bad it hurts to see her like this.
“Mommy,” Willa says, letting go of Lolli and jumping into Aunt Dani’s arms.
It takes Dani a minute before she can lift her. “I missed you so much.” Dani strokes her hair.
“I missed you too,” she says, squeezing her tight.
I meet them at the top of the stairs.
“Are you having fun at Lisa’s?” she asks.
“A little bit. There’s not a lot to do there, and she keeps fighting with people,” Willa says.
I sigh as Aunt Dani cuts her eyes to me.
“Your cousin’s always been a fighter. Just like her daddy,” she says, but the look in her eyes shows me she’s not happy. “Why don’t you go to your room and play with Lolli while I talk to your cousin, okay?”
“Come on, Lolli,” Willa says, going into the house and heading up the stairs with her best friend in tow.
“Why don’t you come in and catch me up on what’s going on,” Dani says, opening the door for me.
We sit down in the living room, and she makes sure to turn the TV on so Willa can’t hear us.
“What on earth . . .” She pauses, obviously trying to calm herself but unable to hide her frustration. “You’re fighting around Willa?”
“I told you I had a lot of things to work out,” I say quietly, too embarrassed to meet her eyes. I hear her frustrated sigh.
“Lisa. You can’t do those types of things around her. I thought you taking her this weekend would be a step in the right direction. For you to start preparing things for her,” she says, exasperated.
“I told her father about her,” I blurt out quickly.
“You. Did. What?” she says, her anger rising with each word.
“That was the best way for me to get things prepared for her,” I say urgently.
She shakes her head then covers her face. “I can’t believe you did that. That was not the right thing to do right now. Why did you do that?”
I’m caught off guard. I’d thought that me clearing up the past and attempting to build a relationship with her father would have gotten me a “you did the right thing” at least.
“I thought that was the right thing to do!” I say defensively.
She removes the scarf from her head and squeezes it in disbelief. “Sometimes you are just like your mother,” she says with a bitter laugh.
“Wow. Okay, I’m going to go and try to figure this out. Since I obviously royally screwed up this parenting thing before I even started,” I say, standing and heading to the door.
“Lisa, sit down!” she demands.
I stop but don’t turn around to face her. I feel tears forming in my eyes, but I quickly wipe them away.
“Sit down please,” she says sternly.
I let out a deep breath and sit on the sofa across from her.
“First things first. When you start this parenting thing full time, running away when things get rough is not something you’re allowed to do. Got it?” she says, and I nod. “So I’m guessing the whole ‘telling the truth’ thing turned out to be a lot worse than you ever imagined?”
I fold my hands in my lap. “The bad part is I haven’t even faced the worst of it yet.”
She lets out a long sigh. “Do you want to tell me who her fathe
r is now?”
My stomach tightens. I can’t . . . I can’t have her look at me the same way everyone else looked at me after they found out. “Not right now. If that’s okay.”
She nods, though I can tell she’s not happy about it.
“I was hoping I could stay here this week. I called in to work. I’m going to take a leave,” I add.
“You should save some of that time for when Willa comes to live with you,” she says.
“It’s only a couple of days,” I mutter.
She coughs. When she can catch her breath, she asks, “How was it with her this weekend before all hell broke loose?”
“Willa’s great. You’ve done a good job with her,” I say, sitting up straighter.
“Lisa, I’ve seen you with those kids you teach. They love you, and Willa would love you too if you gave her a chance.”
“How can I give her a chance?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“She can tell you’re keeping her at a distance. That warmness you exhibit with other children isn’t there with her. You of all people should know that children have a sixth sense. They can be very perceptive, especially your daughter,” she says, and my heart skips a beat. That’s the first time she’s referred to Willa as my daughter.
I start to feel hot, and the house seems a lot smaller than it was. I stand quickly. “I changed my mind. I’m going to go.”
“Lisa, come on,” she says, unable to hide the disgust in her voice.
“I just need time.” I stop before exiting. “Tell Willa I said goodbye.”
Before I get in the car, the little food I had this morning shoots up through my throat.
MY HEAD IS pounding. I open my eyes to see a blurry version of Aidan standing over me. He’s holding a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels and shaking his head disdainfully. He looks angry. I sure as hell don’t want to deal with his shit and a pounding headache at the same time.
“Where’s Willa?” he asks sharply.
I roll my eyes, still feeling a little drunk. “I took her back to my aunt’s. I’m not ready yet.” I roll over in the bed and pull the covers over my face.
He promptly rips them off me. “You’re not ready yet?” he asks in a bitter, sarcastic tone.
“Just get out.” I tug the covers from him, but he’s so much stronger than me, and I fall back when he lets them go. “Why are you being such an asshole!” My voice quivers. “Don’t you know what I’m going through right now?”
His eyes practically bug out of his head, and he laughs. “Are you fucking kidding?” His eyes have gone dark, and his nostrils flare. “What you’re going through? Let’s see. You ruined your best friend’s life by fucking his dad, you had his kid, and the only mother that kid has ever known is dying. Let’s not forget you’ve probably broken up Will’s marriage over some eight-year-old bullshit. Not that you shouldn’t have said anything, but come on, eight fucking years later? When things are finally going good for everyone? And after all of that, you’re sitting here, crying and drunk, throwing a pity party and thinking about what you’re going through?”
I stare at him looking like a fake Captain America. His blond hair’s grown out from the buzz cut he came home with from his tour in the army. I can’t believe he just said that to me. I open my mouth to defend myself, but I can’t think of anything to say. So I jump off the bed, and I push him as hard as I can in his chest. He just pushes me back on the bed with one hand. I jump off again and swing at him, and he grabs my arm and twists it behind my back.
“Let go, Aidan!” I screech, but he forces me to walk toward my full-length mirror.
“If you want to be mad at someone, look. She’s right there. That’s who you should be pissed at, not me. If I were you, I’d suggest you be a little nicer to me because right now, I’m the only friend you’ve got,” he says before letting my arm go.
The fact that Aidan’s my only friend makes me want to burst into tears. I wish I was back in the fifth grade when I could actually kick his ass. The only good thing about him being here is that I won’t let myself cry in front of him—I still have a single shred of pride left. I grab a pillow and scream into it.
I fucked up, which happens a lot, but I really fucked up this time. I can’t believe I did this! Usually when Aidan and I fight, I call Chris . . . I was so estatic when I got back from school that he was talking to me again . . . I may never be able to call Chris again. I feel my emotions fighting to get out of me, but not here, not in front of him. Anger, frustration, and bitterness are what Aidan handles. Genuine sadness and regret are what Chr—
“I’m not ready for this.” And I cry, as much as I don’t want to.
He looks at me for the first time with sympathy. He sits beside me and pulls me into a hug.
“I’m not ready to raise a daughter, especially not by myself. She deserves better than where I am in my life. I don’t want to be her Evie,” I say. My phone starts to ring.
“Want me to look and see who it is?”
I nod.
“Aunt Dani,” he says.
I laugh and shake my head. “I can’t talk to her like this, not when I’m still half drunk and frantic.”
He nods. “Y-you’re a teacher though, Leese. Kids love you. You really don’t think you’d be a good mom?”
I chuckle. “In some weird, twisted way, and don’t hate me when I say this, I became a teacher because of Will. Kids love me, and I love kids, but to have one twenty-four-seven? To be responsible for what type of person they become?” I sigh and cover my face. “I think she’d probably be better off with my grandparents.”
His face falls. “Aren’t your grandparents, like, in their seventies?”
“Yeah.”
My phone vibrates again. Aidan picks it up and sighs. He passes it to me. It’s a text message from Will.
Can I see her?
I roll my eyes and turn off the phone. “I think I need to get away from here. From this town, these people, the memories.” I quietly rub the back of my neck.
“Do you remember Brett?” I ask hesitantly, and he rolls his eyes.
“The guy you dated in high school?” he asks hesitantly.
“Yeah, he has his own real estate company in San Francisco. We’ve been talking, and I think it would be a good change of scenery,” I say, and Aidan shakes his head. Brett was always a great guy, and San Francisco is an amazing place. It fits me better than where I am now, living in this awful fantasy life.
“What about Willa?” he asks, and I see the worry in his eyes.
“I’m not saying forever. Just for a while, just until I can get all of this out of the way and move on and be better for her,” I say, trying to convince him that this is a good thing, trying to convince myself. He sighs and gets off the floor.
“I’ll see you later, Lisa,” he says with a small smile, and I nod, and when he leaves, I cry, feeling like I’ve just lost my last friend.
I’VE BEEN HOME alone for two days. No calls, not from Aunt Dani, Will, or Aidan. The days blend together, and I spend most of them drinking and watching bad daytime TV, searching for anyone who seems to have done worse things than me. I don’t see anyone until I watch a daytime show titled “I’m Sleeping with My Stepbrother and My Stepdad.”
My doorbell rings. I just ordered a pizza, but this would be record time for delivery. I grab my wallet off the table and swing the door open, and my hand becomes paralyzed when I see her standing there. My breath hitches. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since she found out. My eyes won’t leave her no matter how badly I want to look away. I swallow hard, trying to think of what to say. No words seem good enough. She doesn’t look angry or sad or anything. Her expression is completely unreadable, and that’s scarier than anything.
“Can I come in?” she asks quietly, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, as if she’s here all the time and we’re friends.
My mind scans through the Lifetime movies I’ve seen, and I wonder if she’s here to kill me.
&
nbsp; “Or you can come out. I’d just like to talk to you,” she says, maybe reading my mind.
I realize I’m being ridiculous. If she wanted to kill me, I don’t think it’d be in broad daylight with her car parked in front of my house. I nod because I’m literally unable to speak. I step back to allow her into my house, and I close the door behind her. She looks around briefly and sits on the couch. I stand nervously.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” she says.
My stomach drops. “I think I have some idea why,” I say carefully.
She nods.
“I know my words are worthless to you,” I say hesitantly.
She looks at me, her eyes boring into mine, and I feel uncomfortable. But I know this won’t be a comfortable experience—who would expect it to be?
“I just want to know why. I-I think that’s why I’m here,” she says as if even she’s unsure of why she’s here.
I sigh. That’s a reasonable question. If I was in her shoes, I’d want to know why, but if I was her, I wouldn’t want to hear the answer I have to give.
“It just happened,” I say quietly, and I see her mouth tighten. I know it’s a bullshit answer, but I’m afraid to say any more.
“Can you be a little more specific?” she says stoically.
I let out a deep breath. “I thought I was in love. I was young and stupid, and I thought he was the one for me.”
“Even though he was married and Chris’s dad?” she asks, her voice raised just slightly.
“Very, very stupid,” I admit.
She nods and folds her hands in her lap. “Did he initiate it, or did you?”
This is when my stomach flips in on itself. I get it—she’s here to ask the questions she can’t bear to ask him, and I hate what I’m about to say.
“I did. I came on to him. I kissed him first, and I seduced him,” I say, feeling my cheeks burn.
She looks at me in disbelief. “Why him?” Her voice breaks.
My throat burns from seeing the pain in her face, witnessing firsthand the damage I’ve caused.
“I thought . . . he made me feel different. Not like a stupid kid whose mom was a whore who lived on the wrong side of town. He looked at me like I was somebody, like I could be whoever I wanted, and it made me feel . . .” I try to think of a phrase that’s respectful in some form.